I know a lot of you flat landers like to visit our great state on vacation, so just in case you hadn't heard, our wildfire season started a little early and nasty...

BLACK FOREST —The Black Forest fire burning north of Colorado Springs has now destroyed at least 360 homes and consumed 15,000 acres, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said at a news conference early Thursday. The list of homes that has been evaluated has been posted online and is updated whenever possible.

Maketa stressed that the evaluation of structures is ongoing. "Home assessments can change in 10 minutes," he said. "We are trying to keep it as accurate as possible."

The evacuation area includes 94,000 acres and 13,000 homes as of Thursday morning. Some 38,000 people have been evacuated.

The fire was first reported Monday about 1 p.m. No cause has been established and there is no containment.

No injuries to residents or firefighters have been reported, although Maketa noted that there were reports of people who refused to evacuate. One person is reported to be missing.

Maketa said that efforts to check the address of the missing person have been hampered by the fire behavior.

No wildfire in Colorado history has destroyed more homes. The Waldo Canyon fire west of Colorado Springs in 2012 destroyed 347 homes.

The evacuation zone for the Black Forest fire was expanded early Thursday morning because of "dynamic changing conditions," the sheriff's office said.

Overnight, sheriff's deputies went door-to-door in the expanded evacuation area.

The zone now also includes Highway 83 east to Eastonville Road, and Walker Road north to South County Line Road, linking an Elbert County evacuation area to the original El Paso County evacuation area.

The pine beetle thing is actually slowing down significantly, albeit mostly due to the fact that they are running out of food. Spruce beetles are the new worry.

But, yes, there's plenty of dead pines just waiting to go up in flames here.

Yep that’s the way it is all throughout the entire rocky mountain region. You can thank the environazi's for that. EVERY time the forest service wants to go in and clean some of that out, or thin it out, those ****ing hippies file a lawsuit. At this point, there is so much fuel that when a fire does get started, it's damn near impossible to put it out.

__________________A gun is like a parachute. If you need one, and don't have one... you'll probably never need one again.

Yep that’s the way it is all throughout the entire rocky mountain region. You can thank the environazi's for that. EVERY time the forest service wants to go in and clean some of that out, or thin it out, those ****ing hippies file a lawsuit. At this point, there is so much fuel that when a fire does get started, it's damn near impossible to put it out.

Yup. We are facing the same thing in the National Forests here (NE Washington). The last couple of years have had wet summers but once we get a couple of hot, dry summers, the forests are going to burn to the ground. There are huge swaths of dead trees thanks to the pine beetles and not being able to clean them out with logging. There is also a huge amount of fuel on the ground thanks to not being able to clean out the windfall, etc.